In the lead-up to next week’s Melbourne Cup, bookmaker Tom Waterhouse is heavily marketing a “$25 million bet that stops a nation”. All you have to do is give him A$10 and if you place the first 10 horses…

We are faced with a myriad of choice in our lives - but an emerging body of work suggests the more choice we’re faced with, the more likely we’ll make a poor decision. The conundrum is called the “curse…

Neuroeconomics is a burgeoning field aimed at helping us understand decision-making.
Image sourced from www.shutterstock.comJune 17, 2014

Whether choosing a dinner, a car, a spouse or an investment, experts now know what part of the brain our likes and dislikes are encoded, how we represent alternatives, and even how we choose. This has…

Fight or flight? Bankers likely to opt for the second.
BK and EPFebruary 17, 2014

In times of financial uncertainty and crisis, high stress reactions lead to traders becoming more risk averse, which drives pessimism and further falls in finance, according to a new study. This is because…

A game of bowls now, or Premier League tickets in a month? Your hippocampus can help.
Crystian CruzOctober 22, 2013

Would you prefer a beer right now or a bottle of champagne next week? So begins an interesting new study published today in the journal PloS Biology. Of course these kinds of choices feature throughout…

When emotions meet economics: New York police and protesters clash during the Occupy movement protests on Wall Street.
AAPFebruary 20, 2012

In a 2008 paper on neuroeconomics, Carnegie Mellon University economist George Loewenstein said: “Whereas psychologists tend to view humans as fallible and sometime even self-destructive, economists tend…